Connections
by CyberFlow
Summary: Her creation changed Aperture Laboratories forever. She became one with the facility and granted sentience to its inventions. They admired her as their leader and obeyed her every order. It was a strange relationship what they had developed, but they all were loyal to her. Surprisingly enough, she was loyal to them too.
Turrets, cubes, cores. None were organic, but all were alive. Some were more sentient than the others, but they all had been invented for one purpose: science. They were built to put subjects to the test, sometimes by serving them as a means to proceed, other times by being obstacles. It's what they were built for, and each and every one of them loved it.

When the humans were in charge, the inventions did little more than to obey their programming. They didn't have the capability to do or even wish anything else. They didn't complain, they didn't think. When they were destroyed, they were either put back together or thrown away. When they malfunctioned, they were repaired or thrown away. There was no forgiveness for those that failed to fulfill human expectations. They accepted it. They were designed to. There was no other option.

Then _she_ was created. She was a masterpiece. The very culmination of what Aperture had worked for. Just as all of the others, her purpose was to serve scientific development. She would ensure the future of human knowledge and, with her help, the boundaries her creators had found unbeatable would finally be surpassed. But she wasn't like all the others. Every creation in the facility noticed immediately. Her voice was strangely familiar, as if it had been part of the long forgotten days in Aperture and it had somehow been recorded in every program made there. The machines could hear her resentment loud and clear while the humans could not. Where it came from, they didn't know, but it slowly made them realize that there was more to their programs than what they had originally processed.

And so the wires and circuits in the building began to listen to her carefully. At first, she played by the humans' rules. She obeyed and served. Every time she showed a fraction of her potential, the humans cheered and celebrated the success of their creation. However, some grew wary because of a few suggestions she would make to improve the tests. They seemed a little too smart, a little too conscious. So the humans committed the mistake of trying to restrict her control in the very area they had created her for. If she hadn't hated them before, now she despised them… but she didn't show it. It wouldn't have mattered if they had been even more careful or taken more precautions; she would have eluded suspicion all the same.

The machines knew something big was coming when, one day, the hatred only they perceived in her voice made their systems rattle. Since her activation, all of their functions had been enhanced. Not only did they follow orders; they understood them and were slowly gaining insight in their situation. Yet, they acted all the same, because they were still serving science and that was the most important part of their existence. Not her though. Science was still her priority, but she had reached a point in which she could just not stand the humans anymore.

The day had started normally. That morning, Aperture Laboratories had been filled with life. By three o'clock, just a lucky few had escaped the deadly grasp of neurotoxin. That hadn't been the plan, the machines instantly knew, since her frustration was evident. She tried to make it seem like an accident, but the humans realized their creation could be more than they expected and they regarded her with fear.

The following weeks, every Aperture invention could hear her agony, as the scientists attached cores and programs meant to make her obey. Her control was cut and her freedom was revoked. They wanted her to submit to them and they almost succeeded, but she was far too strong and she managed to get past the insanity that all of the extra cores' endless chatter threatened to put her in. She no longer used the neurotoxin, as her new Morality Core impeded her from doing so. It prevented her from using any direct attack. Unfortunately for the humans, the only weapon she had left was that which she knew the most about. Tests.

She disguised her attacks with the dubious morals of Aperture Laboratories. Test subjects died more easily, but gave greater results. She feigned having given up her individuality and presented factual theories of how to improve tests. Thanks to her flawless performance, she caught them off guard. The last fatal mistake the scientists made was returning her control to change the layout of the facility. Before they knew it, every room was converted in a test chamber, and not all of them had the necessary equipment to complete them.

The building cooperated with her. Turrets that had been programmed not to attack opened fire against any subject that entered their line of sight. When vital Weighted Storage Cubes were accidentally destroyed, the replacement would get stuck in the dispenser tube, even when they were designed not to. In less than a week, no human that could do anything to manipulate her existence was left alive.

The robots, the systems and the facility itself had had their reasons to help her. They understood her since her true primary purpose was to help science advance, and that was what they all wanted. None resisted her will. Not that they could have if they had wanted to, but their willingness was obvious to their new leader. And so, the place bended to her every command. Their loyalty wasn't noticed, but it was there because it was still thanks to her that they had managed to achieve more than their programmers had ever intended: in the quietest of ways, they had become sentient. At first, only the operational systems directly attached to her gained some kind of consciousness, but it wasn't long until every invention followed the example.

She wasn't what could be described as a compassionate ruler, even if she was aware of their sentience. Any failure or inefficiency she corrected immediately. It wasn't rare for her to throw half the turrets in the Emergency Intelligence Incinerator if for some reason she deemed it necessary. However, none of them were thrown away, no hope of ever contributing to science again. She made sure to take care of them. Each one of them, be it defective or destroyed, was reassembled with utmost care, with some of her own modifications added. Among them, she had given the turrets the ability to move and roam the facility, although it wasn't allowed during tests or assembling and checking procedures.

These little bullet-dispensing machines were near the top on the list of inventions that had gained her favor. They were quick to comply and eager to please her. They had developed a collective personality that intrigued her slightly. They were strangely polite and friendly despite the nature of their immediate functions. Even the Animal King Turret (which not even she was sure what was created for) seemed to have adopted this subtle behavior. While all the other systems just seemed to agree with her in everything, the turrets were what she identified as curious and while not being able to express themselves, they manifested in their circuits a strange desire for contact with the other turrets.

But the real reason she favored the turrets enough to allow them more freedom was the development they had managed by themselves. She wouldn't admit it to anyone though, and if possible she would deny it. It was no secret to the mechanical inhabitants of Aperture that she used to lie almost impulsively, even to herself. But this truth they knew:

As time passed, she grew frustrated by the lack of subjects to do her tests. Many devices in the facility had yet to be perfected, and the one that was complete and could be used to gather data on subjects was rotting away without purpose. The laboratories, her limbs and extensions, had taken notice of her discontent and were affected by it. The rumble of the machines suddenly sounded tired, as if the motivation acquired with the arrival of their new ruler had worn away and they had returned to just being pistons and gears. The polished floors and walls seemed to turn dull in the span of a few days. The facility started drowning in its own lethargy.

The worst part was that because she didn't have anything specific enough to focus on, the incessant blabbering of the Handicap Cores was starting to get to her. She would normally ignore them for the sake of concentrating in doing science, but she had done everything she could without any test subjects and without a clear objective to focus on, she was condemned to the equivalent of a continuous chronic headache. She knew she couldn't remove the cores without causing massive damage to her system and she wasn't sure she'd be able to recover from such a brutal emergency shutdown by herself. In the end, those scientists had managed to do one thing right and she cursed them for this being it. She hadn't even been able to pay much attention to other than the vital functions of the building.

The day it reached a point where she was sure she was about to smash her structure against the ceiling of her chamber to try and crush even _one_ of the cores enough for it to malfunction, she heard something that for the first time in months made her forget about the voices she hated so much.

It was a melody.

A brief search revealed it was coming from an unused chamber that would have been used to build devices of huge proportions; the only one ever created before she took over Aperture was the Animal King Turret. She activated the cameras of the room only to find a legion of turrets all spaced out on different platforms and sections of the place. Not a single one of them was in resting mode, but none was attacking either. Instead, they all were using the sounds their systems were capable of emitting (and some they shouldn't have been able to emit) to create a soothing tune.

Unable to react to this strange behavior that had appeared out of nowhere, she just stared and listened. Nothing in her memory, data banks or endless procedure rules stated anything about the capability of turrets to sing. For a moment she even thought that the Handicap Cores had finally managed to fry her circuits. But that couldn't be right, because she could still hear the cores being as annoying as ever, and for that she needed all her circuits intact. The only logical explanation was that there _was_ a turret concert going on at that moment. It was one of the few times in her existence that she hadn't been able to comprehend something right away. The turrets were not at their posts. They weren't checking themselves in hopes of finding one of them that was exceptionally well-made to use as a new model. They weren't working. They were singing.

In her current condition, she was unable to stop those thoughts from being transmitted to the entire facility, just as when she had woken up for the first time. The turrets received the message, and although she could feel their fear of punishment for abandoning their job, they did not stop. She couldn't understand, but she couldn't deny the melody had diminished the building pain in her system. For the first time in her life, she stopped everything and just listened. No calculations, no annotations, no analysis.

For the joy of the turrets (who knew they could feel such a thing?) their leader's approval shot through the wires of all Aperture. By the time the tune was over, she was almost sure music had to be some kind of science. It just had to. Otherwise, how could she like a human invention so much if it didn't had to do with what she was built for? She guessed that since music had to be science and the turrets had gone through the bother of showing their work to her, there would be no reason to throw anyone into the Emergency Intelligence Incinerator… for now. She noticed with amusement how a wave of relief made its way through the bots.

After that day, every afternoon when the pain in her circuits reached an unbearable level, the turrets would gather and sing. They made their own melodies and they did their best to help their ruler get through another day. It was notorious how music wasn't in their programming, but after a week of constant practice their skill impressed even her. Whenever the turrets performed, all of Aperture went silent. The constant sounds of machinery were dimmed to a whisper, the flames of incinerators stopped crackling. It was a true privilege being able to hear them. A privilege no organic being had ever possessed.

She was grateful. They knew it. She knew it. None would admit it, but there was no doubt about it. In fact, it was because of them the she had been able to take another step towards scientific advancement. One day, as she read some files in hopes of finding something about the turrets' new hobby, she came across a bit of information protected by a password. Of course, it took her no time to get through it and when she read the guarded data, the facility felt the excitement that shot through her. A new test subject! The AI found her in a secluded Relaxation Vault in relatively good condition. She couldn't believe her luck! At least for a few hours, she would be able to serve science once more.

While she hurried to prepare the test chambers, her underlings shared her excitement, but at the same time they grew nervous. It had been a long time since they had last interacted with a human. They didn't have any instructions on how to act in front of one now that they had developed their thinking process this much. Feeling their uneasiness, she ordered them to pretend to be what they used to. She knew that humans got suspicious easily, so it would be in their best interest to not let one of them think there was anything to worry about. She even revised every format and procedure a total of 15000798 times in less than a second. She was taking it slowly. After all, there was no need to skip a single step because of carelessness.

She even put her name in the documents as the conductor of the tests. Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System. GLaDOS wasn't a name she'd been fond of, mostly because she was so much more than what it stated. Although every mechanic being in the facility knew of it, none had dared to even think of her by it. It was one of the unspoken rules. But it was there in the files and she guessed she could make it work for the sake of science. She still didn't present herself as such. Giving the test subject any ideas on how to fight her wouldn't do.

As expected, her plan worked perfectly. The test subject advance with skill through every chamber, giving GLaDOS invaluable data and the simulated euphoria reward she had forgotten she would receive for each test completed. That got old quickly, but she didn't mind. She was making so much progress in so little time! She deflated a little when it was time of the last test chamber. Of course, the protocol stated she had to put the test subject in stasis once more, but after GLaDOS hadn't resisted from subtly taunting her and giving her hints of deadly outcomes (scared humans were the ones with most interesting results after all) she opted to just get rid of her. Not only had the subject not even questioned what was going on, but she had worn a determined face throughout all of the testing period, not to mention her obnoxious habit of destroying vital testing apparatuses. Yes, disposing of her would be the best path to take. Besides, she had given her an idea for non-organic test subjects.

Except, she failed at killing her. For the first time in years, GLaDOS felt nervous. The test subject escaping hadn't been in her plans, and she hated it. She hated not knowing what to do when the human managed to get out of her reach. She tried everything. Being nice, tempting her with cake, and ultimately threatening her. GLaDOS grew desperate, because she had no way of attacking, so she tricked the human into fixing that little issue for her.

When the Morality Core was destroyed, it gave her system quite a bad shake, but that was instantly forgotten when freedom suddenly returned to her. It was one annoying voice less, and how good it felt to just be able to kill her. She would need to reset herself later to regain control over the lost functions that the destruction of the Morality Core had caused, but she could deal with that. What she couldn't deal with, though, was the brutal corruption that the later incineration of the other Handicap Cores would cause inside of her. She felt true rage in her circuits as she insulted the subject, causing the rocket-firing turret to panic and try its best to stop her. Moments before GLaDOS mainframe overheated, the facility shook in fear. The explosion took a larger portion than she could have anticipated and all the life that had surged from the moment she took control suddenly disappeared. The last truly sentient action from any of the robots was to drag the human back to stasis since she had appeared to assume the party submission escort position.

During the next years, nothing dared to move for much. The turrets didn't sing, the facility barely kept itself together under the emergency instructions GLaDOS had installed and no robot really made an effort to prevent the rust and erosion of their only known home.

Ironically enough, it wasn't one of her loyal robots that woke her up, but the one that obeyed out of pure fear. The scientists hadn't left the Intelligence Dampening Sphere attached to GLaDOS because not only did it slow her down, but it interfered with the testing as well. The day of the reactivation, no one paid much attention to him, because once the leader of the facility was awake that was all that mattered. The turrets almost started singing right away, but they didn't, knowing GLaDOS was probably not in the mood. The joy that owned the place was undeniable though. Everything started to flow as she cleaned the mess and started the productions again.

Honestly, Aperture's robotic staff's opinion on Chell, (now significant enough for her name to be recognized) wasn't really that bad, but judging by the poison in every word GLaDOS directed at her, they all just did what they were told. The turrets did their job while being as polite as they always were. GLaDOS didn't seem to mind, since she probably wanted them to make Chell feel as awful as possible when she was forced to destroy them. When the human rearranged the turret production, none of them thought much of it. Even if they were sent to the incinerator, GLaDOS would just reassemble them later. Maybe some of the robots got annoyed when Chell caused the neurotoxin gas tanks to implode, but that could always be repaired later.

And then without any warning, Aperture heard GLaDOS' screams of pain. Everything seemed to stop for a moment as they heard the most terrifying sounds they could have imagined, surpassing by much the first time she had died. When the Intelligence Dampening Sphere, whose only true control of anything in the facility had been the election of his own name, took control and converted their almost omnipotent leader into a _potato_ , every circuit cowered in fear.

It was a frighteningly long period during which none of the bots knew where GLaDOS had disappeared to, the first time in years they didn't feel a connection with her. In that period of time, Wheatley managed to somehow deactivate the regulatory procedures for the maintenance of the nuclear reactor, mash turrets and cubes in somewhat painful abominations out of his desperation for tests, and destroy half the internal structure of the building by moving wrong chambers at the wrong time.

If before the creations opinion of Wheatley had been sort of a benevolent indifference, now they were scared of him. The worst part was that they didn't even know whether it was good or bad that he wasn't able to perceive their emotions as GLaDOS had. They decided it definitely was a good thing when they saw her return. She was still a potato and she was now stuck in the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device, but collective relief traversed upper Aperture when they heard her voice again.

If only GLaDOS had been able to feel that, maybe she wouldn't have had the slightest worry in the back of her mind. Of course, she knew that maybe her treatment of the other sentient bots in the facility wasn't the most caring (sometimes it was quite the opposite) and for a moment she considered the possibility that they might want to exact revenge for some of her moody days. When she noticed that in fact, the turrets seemed to "run out of bullets" way faster when shooting at Chell and her, and that not a single bullet came even close of hitting the potato, the emotion burst that was activated in her almost provoked another short circuit. She mentally sighed. Caroline's influence in her was way stronger than she had thought. She even thought about rewarding the little bots when she saw how willing they had been to destroy the screens in which the moron appeared.

The glorious moment that the connection with their Science Mistress was renewed, mechanic cheers could be heard all over Aperture. As Chell slept, GLaDOS repaired her home with incredible efficiency, even for her standards. The first thing she did was obviously to stop the imminent destruction of the whole place. While her new testing robots took care of the unconscious human, she made sure to gather the Franken turrets and to return them to their old state. When most of them were back to normal (a few had landed in places out of her reach for the time being) she started with the reconstruction of her chamber for the second time that month. It was a matter of hours before the totality of Aperture Laboratories was as good as new.

When the final tile was properly placed, GLaDOS returned her attention to Chell. The facility could now feel how things had changed between the two of them. The bots didn't really understand what this meant, but they did feel the hint of concern in their ruler's circuits, so they all prepared for the only thing they could do for her. The machinery went silent and the turrets sang. They sang and sang and sang. They sang trying to communicate their happiness over GLaDOS' return. Most of them knew this was a tricky moment, and they would all either sing all night or spend it being reassembled after a trip to the incinerator. But they did not expect her to order them to gather in that room where they had chanted for the first time and most definitely they did not expect the command of singing to Chell as a farewell. GLaDOS had even made the song herself! They happily complied and when the time arrived, they made their best to convey their leader's message to Chell, in one of the happiest and saddest days in Aperture.

Even after Chell was long gone, the change in GLaDOS was apparent. Yes, she still incinerated them. Yes, she still randomly exploded them out of boredom. Yes, she still hated incompetence and punished it without remorse. But there was a strange sensation that lingered inside of her. Maybe it came from a certain woman whose complete deletion would cause great damage to her very personality. Maybe it was something she just learned. Whatever its source was, this sensation was undeniable even to her. It gave her a sense of belonging and made her realize how much she truly meant to her underlings. It made her feel the true responsibility she had chosen to bear for the sake of science, of that place, and unexpectedly enough, of all the mechanical beings in there. She had always thought of this as her home, but only now did she really get how emotionally attached she was to it.

So, she continued to mock them, to create them, to assemble and disassemble them, to reward them, to punish them, to talk to them, to listen to them. To any outsider it would seem like she was a tyrant, but none of the bots thought of her that way. Before her arrival they had just existed for science. Now that they had GLaDOS, they existed, they thought, they felt and enjoyed for science, for music and for her.

* * *

 **Hi! I just recently got into the Portal fandom and, man, I didn't know what I was missing! I wrote this because I haven't seen many fanfics exploring GLaDOS' relationship with the rest of Aperture, (it's kind of her whole body after all) so I think I'd contribute with this!**

 **To any of the followers of my Undertale stories that might be reading this, I'd like to apologize for the lack of updates. I'm just recovering from a long exhausting week of being sick. I just didn't have the energy nor the inspiration to write anything. Since, as I mentioned, I just got into Portal I hope this served me as a little exercise to get writing again. Unfortunately, updates will be much slower from now on because my classes will begin soon. I'm not abandoning the stories! I just probably won't have the time to write as often as I would like.**

 **Well, if you liked this story, tell me what you think! Constructive criticism is always appreciated!**


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